HARTFORD, Conn. — Local child-welfare officials first came into contact with the girl kidnapped as an infant from a New York City hospital in 1997, about seven years before the department began investigating the girl’s paternity.

An internal agency report determined that officials opened a file on Carlina White, known at the time as Nejdra Nance, when she was 17 years old, pregnant and unable to obtain prenatal care because her birth certificate had been altered.